The Elite (11 page)

“What in the world is
wrong
with you?” Madeline Reynaud 9 6

T H E E L I T E

was fond of yelling, usually before she stepped out of the room in a huff, shaking her perfectly coifed satin hair from side to side. “If I had any sense at all, I’d pull you out of Meadlowlark and enroll you in the Lycée Francąis, where you belong!” The Lycée Francąis was an exclusive private school on East Seventy- fifth Street, where the students were forced to wear stupid, itchy uniforms, and all classes were taught exclusively in French. Phoebe thought it sounded like a French-fried nightmare.

Phoebe wasn’t sure how or why it happened, but when she turned thirteen, and people began to notice that she was sort of pretty, her mother started acting like Phoebe was the biggest disappointment of her life—and when she was being honest with herself, Phoebe suspected that it just might be true. Her mother just couldn’t stand sharing the spotlight—

she needed male attention the way alcoholics needed vodka—

and she’d mastered the art of throwing a star- fit whenever anyone dared compliment Phoebe on how lovely she was.

Phoebe had begun to dread those moments, watching as her mother’s surgically tightened skin froze like a mask, her eyes glazing over with annoyance.

Madeline Ashbrook had arrived on the Manhattan debu-tante circuit a fresh, rosy girl of eigh teen with jet- black hair and flashing Ca

rib

be

an-

blue eyes that bewitched any man

within fifty yards, including Phoebe’s father, Etienne Reynaud, who’d moved to the United State at seventeen to attend Harvard. But now, with forty rapidly approaching, and her father’s attention decidedly waning, Phoebe often found her 9 7

J E N N I F E R B A N A S H

mother staring into mirrors for hours at a time, pulling back the skin of her jaw or eyelids while muttering under her breath.

She was still earth- shatteringly gorgeous—for a woman of a certain age. But the cosmetic procedures she was forever subjecting herself to weren’t helping any. All the Botox and laser resurfacing she spent thousands on only made her look more like an alien, and not a particularly youthful alien either.

Phoebe heard the tinny, contagious sound of giggling coming from her sister’s room across the hall, and she got up and cautiously opened her bedroom door. The sound of breaking glass against the imported Italian tiles in her parents’

bathroom drowned out her sister’s laughter, and made Phoebe jump out of her room and out onto the slick, polished floors of the hallway. Phoebe knocked lightly on the large pink metallic star Bijoux had pasted to her bedroom door. “Beebs?

You in there?” She swung it open.

Bijoux sat behind a reproduction of a Chippendale desk—

perfect in every detail—except that it was scaled to the size of a six- year- old’s body. Even though the maid had probably picked her up hours ago, Bijoux was still wearing the pink tutu and dirty white leotard she’d worn to ballet class earlier that afternoon, and a pair of their mother’s black Chanel reading glasses sat on the bridge of her tiny nose, magnifying her blue eyes, making them look gigantic. Her room was painted a shiny, candy pink, and an Austrian- crystal chandelier hung over her flouncy, pink- and- white ruffled bed. Her best friend, Jeremy Alexander, sat across from the desk wearing jeans and a red Abercrombie T-shirt with pictures of monster trucks on it.

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They were both sucking on Bomb Pops, their mouths stained with the red and blue dye.

“Now,” Bijoux said, peering over the glasses and trying to sit up straight in her chair, “you
did
sign a pre- nup, didn’t you?’

Jeremy giggled, squirming around on his miniature Chippendale chair, and when he opened his mouth Phoebe could see that his tongue was bright blue. “No,” he said, grinning at Phoebe, who was still standing in the doorway, one hand on her hip, “I don’t think so.”

“What are you little monsters up to?” Phoebe smiled, walking over to her sister and kissing her on the top of her dark ponytailed head, breathing in the sweet scent of baby sham-poo along with Givenchy’s signature perfume for the under-seven set, Tartine et Chocolat.

“We’re just playing, Pheebs,” Bijoux said as she placed her rapidly melting Bomb Pop down on the desk, grabbed a magic wand covered with silver glitter off the floor, and promptly began waving it in her sister’s face.

Phoebe grabbed the wand, halting it in midair. “Playing
what?
”

“Divorce court,” Jeremy said matter-

of-

factly, bending

down to grab Bijoux’s ankle under the desk.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” Bijoux screamed, yanking her ankle away from Jeremy and tearing around the room like someone had just put a live tarantula in her tutu. Even though Bijoux could be a holy terror, everyone loved her—the doormen, taxi drivers, puppies, strangers on the street—and, of course she was Mommy’s little darling as well. Madeline was constantly 9 9

J E N N I F E R B A N A S H

cooing over her youn gest daughter, dressing Bijoux in bizarre high- fashion outfits like she was a real-life American Girl doll.

All this should’ve made Phoebe positively despise her baby sister—and the attention she routinely got from their mother—

but strangely, it didn’t. Bijoux was the person Phoebe loved most in the world, and the only one she really trusted.

Phoebe grabbed her sister by the waist and sat down on the round pink rug on the floor, pulling Bijoux down onto her lap and grabbing a juice- stained Harry Potter book from the corner of the desk. “Maybe if you little maniacs can sit still for five minutes,” Phoebe said into Bijoux’s ear, “I’ll read to you guys for a while—unless you’d rather keep playing.”

“We’ll play later,” Bijoux said bossily, pulling the book from Phoebe’s hands and opening it to the beginning. “It’s an open- and- shut case of sexual abandonment.” Bijoux reached up and smacked her sister on the forehead with her small, open palm, smiling mischievously. “Now,
reeeeeead
, Pheebs!”

Bratlet
, Phoebe thought affectionately as Jeremy snuggled up next to her on the floor, and she began to read. Bijoux stuck her thumb in her mouth the way she always did when she was being read to, sucking softly and breathing loudly through her nose as Phoebe turned the pages. It was ridiculous—her little sister was playing divorce court and before long her parents would probably be
visiting
divorce court—it practically defined the word
ironic
. Even though she barely saw her father as it was, Phoebe knew that if her parents split up for good, her mother’s moods would only get worse, and Phoebe really didn’t know if she’d be able to handle it.

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Please don’t let them get divorced,
Phoebe thought as the thick paper sliced the pad of her index finger, giving her an excuse to cry. Tears sprang from the corners of her dark, almond- shaped eyes and rolled silently down her cheeks as she struggled to keep her voice steady, and held on to Bijoux for dear life.

1 0 1

it’s a

different

world

than where

you come

from . . .

Casey stood ner vous ly in Meadlowlar k Academy’s shiny chrome and glass Dining Hall, hugging the side of the Whole Bean coffee kiosk like an infinitely shorter, curly- haired jailbird Paris Hilton. Walking into the Dining Room—with its three-course meals designed by Thomas Keller, Pratesi napkins, stainless steel salad bar, and Whole Bean coffee kiosk—was like stepping onto another planet, one where the aliens used lots of Frederic Fekkai hair products, and overdosed on Frappuc -

cinos and Diet Snapple. And it couldn’t have been more different than the peeling, lime- colored cafeteria she’d left behind at Normal High, with its prepackaged mac and cheese, frozen fish sticks, and greasy burgers.

The kiosk, a pop u lar meeting place for caffeine- deprived T H E E L I T E

students before, after, and sometimes during class, was completely packed, and Casey had to sip her Apple Whipped Caramel iced latte down to a manageable level to avoid spilling the fancypants drink all over her spanking-new yellow sundress.

Usually, she hated stupidly overpriced, high- end coffee, but as soon as she put her new clothes on this morning, she’d been fighting the slightly creepy feeling that she’d become someone else entirely. Someone who spent three hours in the bathroom getting ready for school, only to then show up and order the most preposterously complicated java on the menu. And her new dress, and Jimmy Choo cork wedge heels borrowed from Sophie’s endless closet, only made her feel even more out of place and less like herself—whoever
that
was anymore.

Casey tried to breathe steadily, but with the amount of caffeine rushing through her sleep- deprived system, it was hard to keep her pulse from racing or her palms from sweating around the plastic cup. Ugh—she was the only person she knew whose hands could sweat while holding an ice- filled cup. She’d sat up for hours the night before, giddy with anticipation and fear, gripping her violin with white- knuckled fingers and practicing scales with frenzied intensity, until Nanna’s crackly, sleepy voice yelled through the wall for her to “cut the crap and go to sleep already.” As she lay in bed, staring across her cluttered room at her new dress hanging on the back of the door, she couldn’t help imagining what she’d say to Drew when she saw him today—and what he might say back.
So much for girls sticking
together
, she thought, licking whipped cream from the rim of her cup.
I guess lust is definitely stronger than friendship.
Not that 1 0 3

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you could really call them friends anyway. The thought made Casey kind of sad. She hadn’t known how much she missed having real friends until she’d moved away and lost them.

Even though Madison’s offer to buy Casey the dress definitely crossed the line from acquaintance to something more personal, Casey wasn’t sure if she’d ever get close enough to Madison to really consider her a real friend—whatever that meant. Casey had never met anyone truly rich before now, but she did know—mostly from watching shows like
Laguna Beach
and The Hills
on MTV—that people with money lived in a different world, maybe even a different universe. And standing there in a ridiculously expensive dress she didn’t pay for, for the first time Casey wondered if she’d been bought along with it, and she didn’t like the way it made her stomach suddenly queasy, despite the mouth- watering aromas of fresh croissants and roasted veggie omelets permeating the room.

In spite of the sudden nausea and the whipped cream–filled coffee—or maybe in protest of it—Casey’s stomach started to growl loudly. The girl standing next to her, wearing a pair of heavily distressed Seven jeans and the same Imitation of Christ tank Madison bought yesterday, paused while sending an e-mail on her BlackBerry to give Casey a disgusted look.

“There’s, like,
food
over there, you know,” she said, staring at Casey from behind an oversize pair of pink- lensed Gucci aviators. “Breakfast? You’ve heard of it? The most important meal of the day?” Casey opened her mouth, then closed it again, unsure of how to respond. The girl’s hair was straightened within an inch of its life, and it stopped at her exposed 1 0 4

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collarbones in a razor- sharp bob. “Or, there’s always the rexie table,” she said, pointing at a large table farthest away from the food, filled with a group of extraordinarily pale, wan- looking girls whose collective body weight probably equaled
one
of the Olsen twins. The rexies were bent over their textbooks, their nutrient- deficient locks hanging limply around pinched faces.

A single, cut- up apple sat on a napkin in the center of the table, and not one of the girls acknowledged—much less ingested—

the rapidly browning slices. “They’re on the Kleenex diet.”

Kleenex diet? That couldn’t be what it sounded like, could it?

“They eat Kleenex instead of food,” scarily hip- girl said in a tone that insinuated that Casey was quite possibly the stupid-est life form on planet earth. “Models do it to get ready before Fashion Week,” she went on, as if that explained everything.

“I’m not . . .” Casey said, stammering. “I mean, I
eat.
”

The girl lowered her aviators, exposing expertly applied black shadow flecked with silver glitter. “Sure you do,” she said, her voice a flat monotone. She gave Casey one final look up and down before walking away, already engrossed in a conversation on her wireless headset just as Drew Van Allen walked through the doorway.

Casey’s heart began to race and all at once she realized she was totally panicking. She wanted to run out of the Dining Hall and never come back—or throw herself in his arms and declare her undying lust. Why was talking to guys so completely stressful? Casey pulled her already out- of- control curls behind her ears and tried to look contemplative as she studied her apple latte like it held the riddle of the Sphinx.

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Drew shuffled over to the register, sunglasses on, and ordered a coffee. In his Triple Five Soul cargos and white button-down shirt, his tanned arms protruded from the rolled- up sleeves, he was even cuter than she remembered. In fact, he was perfect. Would he even remember her? And, more importantly, would he even talk to her? Casey’s thoughts raced as fast as the caffeine rushing through her veins.
Crap. Why do I
have to sweat so much all the time? Is my hair frizzing yet? Why
am I such a moron?

Casey smoothed down the polished cotton of her skirt as Drew removes his shades, taking a long, greedy gulp of coffee as he looked up, his gaze meeting hers. Drew’s face looked totally blank—and the black sunglasses didn’t help.
Oh God, he doesn’t
even remember me!
Casey thought with no small amount of dismay, her stomach flipping over as she shifted her weight from her left foot to her right.
And these stupid shoes are killing me.